Hillary Clinton’s Syria dilemma

Hillary Clinton has answered calls that she pick a side in the Syria debate. But the former Secretary of State’s brief statement Tuesday backing President Barack Obama’s campaign for a military strike won’t be the last time she’s asked to talk about the potentially sensitive issue.

Clinton pressed during her time at Foggy Bottom to arm some Syrian rebels to combat the regime of Bashar Assad. And her endorsement of Obama’s approach to military action comes as she plans a series of policy addresses this fall, some of her first extensive public remarks on issues since she left the administration early this year.

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Obama: U.S. credibility on line

But her task in handling foreign policy or national security issues is complicated by her history as the nation’s top diplomat and a onetime and potentially future presidential candidate. Clinton was seen as one of the more hawkish voices in the Obama administration and now needs to demonstrate to a liberal base that she learned from her 2002 vote authorizing the Iraq war and her carefully-calibrated walk away from it during her 2008 campaign.

No one is arguing that a potential strike against Syria is directly on par with the years-long war in Iraq. And how much the current debate matters to another national campaign probably depends on the success and duration of any military operation — as well as whether American troops become involved on the ground, something the administration is ruling out for now.

But just as some Republican presidential hopefuls face a tough call whether to get behind a military strike, Clinton will be pressed for maximum clarity on where she falls on the issue.

“I think Mrs. Clinton finds herself in the middle of a very ironic dilemma,” said Bruce Riedel, of the Brookings Institution, who, like almost everyone interviewed, spoke with POLITICO before Clinton’s aide issued a statement. “She probably lost the nomination for the presidency in 2008 because Barack Obama had spoken out about a stupid war and now he’s put her in the place where she either supports him or speaks out against it. From a political standpoint I think she’s in a tough place.”

Clinton’s brief initial comments on Syria, made through an aide, came a week before the ex-Secretary of State is to give a speech at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia – the first in a series policy addresses that will be closely watched for any insights about how she believes the United States should handle the crisis in the Mideast.

The interest in her remarks goes beyond the titillation of potential 2016 implications and the what-does-it-mean-politically game. The debate over the U.S. involvement in Syria has galvanized national interest and has the potential to become a defining moment in Obama’s second term – making his former appointee’s response significant.

Will she go deeper than the clipped statement supporting Obama’s ask of Congress to authorize a limited strike in Syria? Will she discuss the NSA leaks and the growing public concern about abuses, as she originally suggested? It’s too soon to say, and her own announcement about the speech left it vague as to the intent, and the majesty of the moment.

“I will talk about the balance and transparency necessary in our national security policies as we move beyond a decades of wars to face new threats,” Clinton said at the American Bar Association recently of the upcoming speech on Sept. 10 – a day after Congress returns to face the Syria vote. “And later in the fall, I’ll address the implications of these issues for American’s global leadership and our moral standing around the world.”

Answering the Syria question this week helps to counter the narrative about her lack of discussion of a subject over which she expressed “lasting regret” as she departed Foggy Bottom earlier this year.

“I think everything she does right now that looks like the [moves of the] heir apparent is important,” said Steve Clemons, a well-known foreign policy writer and blogger, who, like most people interviewed, spoke before Clinton’s late-day statement on Syria. “It’s automatically relevant.”

He added, “She’s got a fine line to walk because in the eyes of many of those who were either supportive of her or skeptical of her in her first run for the presidency [because] she had voted strongly for the Iraq war … and Hillary Clinton had always tilted more toward a hawkish position.”

Indeed, Clinton owned a piece of the Syria puzzle while at State, as one former administration official put it. It is much harder to attack her to an operation taking place months after she left – but it opens the door for familiar criticism from her opponents over her tenure at Foggy Bottom.

“She’s been pretty up front actually for a long time about the need to do something about Syria,” said Joshua Foust, who writes about international security. “I think at a very bare minimum she’s going to talk about how it’s good that President Obama’s trying to do something.”

But he added, “As for the smartness of that, I think that’s a little more complex.”